0 porsche promote its new $900 go-cart. and "providing solutions for the under 10 mid life crisis" and tank tweeted "because my daddy makes more money than your entire immediate family. follow me on twitte twitter @jaketapper. that's it for "the lead." i'm jake tapper. i turn you over to "the situation room." >> president obama and vladimir putin face-off over syria. >> and the nsa leaker in a liveline chat. and president obama cannot get away without bad poll results. you're in "the situation room." they don't seem eye to eye and as you see in this video, they're not spending much time looking each other in the eye. president obama and vladimir putin in a showdown over syria. most want russia to stop backing and anding the se-- and arming syrians. let's go straight to cnn white house correspondent briana keilar. not exactly a cold war did ybut does seem like there is a chill in the air. >> this was a meeting that lasted for two hours. the u.s., the biggest ally of the syrian coalition, russia the biggest ally of the syrian government. they did agree to push the two sides to the negotiating team soon. here's what president obama said. >> with respect to syria, we do have differing perspectives on the problem but we share in reducing the violence, securing chemical weapons and ensuring that they're neither used nor are they subject to proliferation. and that we want to try to resolve the issue through political means if possible. and so we will instruct our teams to continue to work on the potential of a geneva follow-up to the first meeting. >> reporter: now, the date is still to be determined, the conditions are still to be determined. if the two sides sit down, is it under the condition that bashar al assad will leave and there will be a condition to a new government? that's not settled. so president obama and putin not really moving the ball here. yesterday putin was likening the rebels to cannibal. if you compare it to a year ago when president obama and putin last met in mexico at the g20, this was much warmer. it was a very, very icy meeting that they had a year ago. >> it's good to have that perspective, but we all remember last year when the president was caught on the hot mic with president medvedev saying this. >> this is my last election and after my election i have more fle flexibility. >> any signs they have that flexibility and that they're using it? >> that had to do with missile defense, the u.s.'s european-based missile defense system. the u.s. eased tension by foregoing the final phases of that. now the president and very much the one who has always been calcal calling the shots, this relationship one that has been tense over the last year and a lot of it has to do with syria. these two sides are worlds apart on this. not just what putin said in london about the rebels and the rhetoric, but also he doubts whether the u.s. claim that the syrian government has used chemical weapons is true. russia is providing arms. they've threatened to provide anti-aircraft missiles should the u.s. and allies try to put in place a no-fly zone. no, the ball was not moved today. >> thank you. as world leaders grapple with the idea of arming syria's rebels, we have disturbing new details about al qaeda's involvement in syria. they may have at many as 10,000 supporters inside syria and one source said they are making desperate attempting to gain chemical weapons. fr fred frederik pleitgen has our report. >> reporter: the government is starting pushes to get back. this area has seen some of the fiercest fighting in the damascus area. we went straight to the front line to see the house-to-house combat there. we're on the front line with palestinians fighting for the assad regime. snipers do much of the fighting and death can come any second. this is a pro-government sniper position. this fighter just told me he sees a sniper through his scope through-fro from here. we'll wait and see what happens. the man said that took out a rebel fighter. pro government fighters tell me like on other front lines in syria, they are now turning the tide, winning background. the commander's name is abu, i ask him who his enemies are. a lot of the fighting happens inside the houses and here only a wall of sandbags separates the two sides. the pro government militia men say the rebels knock the holes in the wall when they own the turf and rigged some of the percentages with explosives when they fled. the men tell us they've just recently retaken this house. the fighters that left here from the other side booby-trapped this entrance here with what looks like a hand grenade. anybody who would have gone through there and triggered that wire there would have been killed. the pro-government fighters say they're angry at the u.s. after the obama's administration announcement that it will help arm the opposition. >> translator: we will keep fighting until we get rid of all other insurgents in syria and we're sure that god will be on our side." in breaks from combat, the pro-government militiamen sending the praise of syrian president bashar al assad. emboldened by recent gains on the battlefield but also worried what changes u.s. involvement might bring. jim, you go into these areas and up can just see why this conflict has, according to the united nations, already killed up to 93,000 people, you see the fierce fighting between the two sides, you see a lot of the house there is burned from the inside, a lot of destruction there and still even in that area there are a lot of civilians who are caught between the front lines and have nowhere to go. jim? >> thank you for that eye opening report. >> now, fort about leaving notes in a hollow tree or even a secret meeting with deep throat in a parking garage, times have changed. the self-professional claimed nsa leaker is speaking out publicly again, this time in an extraordinary online chat with "the guardian." one thing he did not reveal today, nick, is his wheres about, right? >> reporter: no, no clues on his wheres about, though we can take away from this he does have decent access to the internet. he was online chatting about an hour and three quarters. he had about 2,000 questions lined up, he got through about 1%, 20 of them. he was asked about whether or not he was a traitor, whether or not he was going to give secret documents that he had to the chinese. and i'll quote from what he said here. he said "ask yourself, if i were a chinese spy, wouldn't i have flown directly to beijing? i could be living in a palace petting a phoenix now." that was an exact quote of what he said. so knocking down the idea that he's about to give secrets to the chinese, which is a rumor that's been going around. and to dick cheney and the former vice president, who has accused him of being a traitor, he said "this is the man who gave us the warrantless wire tapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warmup on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 americans as well as leaving 100,000 iraqis dead. being called a traitor by dick cheney is the highest honor you can give an american. that is what edward snowden was saying this evening. he was really hitting back, giving details but really pushing back and trying to get his narrative across here. >> and, nick, he really seemed to be playing to his audience. there are a lot of edward snowden sympathizers out there, he certainly tossed out a lot of red meat to them, talking about dick cheney. though he talked about the senate's gang of eight, which has more to do with immigration right now than surveillance activities on the intelligence front. did he give any insights during this very lengthy exchange, nick, what his next move might be? >> we really didn't get any clues for his next move. he has indicated he would be willing to sort of follow the justice here in hong kong. we've heard from state media inside china indicating that the chinese in beijing think that the hong kong authorities shouldn't hand him back if they were asked. but he was asked why he came to hong kong and the journalist who asked him that question clearly had an indication that he might have wanted to go to iceland rather than hong kong. but the way that he answered this question, snowden said that as an nsa employee, you have to give 30 days notice about traveling so he could only travel at the last minute, only buy a ticket at the last minute. he was afraid of being interdicted on the flight but he said i had to go somewhere where i could get my message out and that was why he said he chose hong kong, jim. >> it just seems that reading between the lines, a lot of planning has gone into what edward snowden is up to these days. >> from the time the news broke at 9 a.m. eastern that snowden would do a live chat, for the next hour there were over 17,000 mentions of the hash tag at twitter. the united states had the most tweets, the u.k. came in second. >> up next, it's the latest attempt to solve a four-decade mystery. you're wondering who could that be? is it jimmy hoffa? that's right. and did russian president putin swipe a super bowl ring from the owner of the new england patriots? we'll get into that as well. the great outdoors, and a great deal.